


Better Than Before (Yesterday’s Gone)

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [34]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Ant-Man (2015) Spoilers, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7121734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope knows she has what it takes to be an Avenger. It’s getting along with her prospective teammates that worries her- and one of them in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Than Before (Yesterday’s Gone)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



In the months since Hope made the decision to join the Avengers, and throughout the lengthy application process, she has had countless hours to consider the minutiae of membership. The spotlight, she can handle, particularly since she intends to keep her identity classified. The missions, the fighting; she isn’t worried about that at all. The pressure of being on the front line of the Earth’s defense? Hope knows she can handle it, knows it from her brain down to her bones.

The only real concern is her prospective teammates. Hope has never had trouble making acquaintances, alliances, even friendships, when required. No one gets very far in business or in life if their personality can’t survive brushes alongside others. But war is different from the cutthroat life of business, and there is no doubt in Hope’s mind that joining the Avengers means fighting a war, a little bit every day. Fighting alongside people creates bonds of a sort that Hope has never experienced, has never had the opportunity to form.

Strategically, Hope hides this worry during her first interview with Sam Wilson, the Falcon, the Avenger who managed to track down and contact Scott. Over coffee at an unassuming bistro in Harlem, she tells the Falcon what she is capable of and what she would bring to the table as an Avenger, honestly and concisely. As she’d expected, Wilson passes her on to the next round.

When she meets Captain America at a run-down diner in Brooklyn, Hope decides to be more candid. Steve Rogers is the sort of leader who needs to know his subordinates’ strengths and their weaknesses; as an experienced boss, Hope can respect this. Rogers admits that sometimes, a team member doesn’t work out, but Hope gets the impression that she hasn’t raised any red flags.

Of course, she hasn’t let slip all of her secrets, not even to Captain America.

She meets the other active-duty Avengers at their compound in upstate New York a few weeks later, when schedules align. Hope’s father is proud of her when he figures out where she keeps disappearing to, which is somewhat infuriating- it’s long past the time when he got to weigh in on her life decisions. But the thrill of running drills with the Avengers, in a suit attuned to her body and her abilities, is enough to wash away any trivial worries from Hope’s mind entirely.

The single, nontrivial worry remains.

Hope gels with the Avengers, the ones she’s met, at least. Wanda Maximoff’s unquantified abilities make her nervous, but she has found a kindred spirit in the razor-sharp and vigilant Black Widow, and no one has implied that her shrinking technique is anything less than a boon to the team. Her fear of not belonging, interrupting the flow of fighting by her presence, has abated. Her fear of this final interview has not.

It’s a month after her field test that Hope has an appointment at Stark Tower in Manhattan. She dresses up for the meeting in a formal skirt suit, crisp and precise: her usual armor. Not a hint of doubt shows on her face; not a tremor of anxiety, or a twinge of guilt, or a blush of memory. When the elevator opens at the penthouse floor, Tony is waiting for her.

He’s wearing an Aerosmith t-shirt and naturally faded jeans, with flyaway hair that means he’s spent the last dozen hours in his lab or workshop. His face is more lined than Hope remembers it, his hair grayer, his eyes more tired and also more awake. He’s everything she remembers and everything she’d wished he could be, and all the memories she’s been ignoring return in a flood.

Attending a lecture that inspired leaps of logic. Initiating correspondence that turned into long letters filled with formulae and nerdy jokes. Finally meeting face-to-face, and letting shared passion over their project flow naturally to the bedroom. The short and fiery weeks they’d spent in labs and at clubs, working hard and playing hard and forgetting about the outside world. The break-up, just as fiery, where Tony called Hope demanding and spiteful and Hope called Tony immature and hollow.

Hope has spent the months leading up to this moment planning how she would meet Tony with the front she’s built and polished in the last decade, how she would freeze any rampant emotions that might surface. And now, he looks up from his tablet and smiles like he’s welcoming a friend, and everything she’d once felt for him, everything that was torn down and forgotten, rises again.

“Hope. Thanks for coming,” Tony says, mouth curling with a hint of irony, extending his hand for a warm shake.

This is a moment where she could let it start again. Hope is canny, and she knows this man, and she knows what a fresh adventure it would be to fall right back in with him. But she’s not a starry-eyed grad student anymore, and her goals have gotten bigger.

It’s abrupt; it’s not professional. But Hope ignores Tony’s outstretched hand and looks him dead in the eye.

“I want to be an Avenger. I need to know if our history will get in the way of that. Could you fight by my side?”

Tony blinks, and after a moment, respect enters his expression; the respect she’d always wanted to see and never had, back then.

“I think I could,” he answers casually, in the way he has that means sincerity. Hope remembers that.

She smiles, and offers her hand to finally shake. “Then let’s get started.”


End file.
